Welcome to the world of Sleeping Beauty Inc. The books can be read in any order.
Book One: Rose Red - You can't buy a girl! But in the year 2214, you can. She can whip you into shape, design your diet, be your personal stylist, and turn you from geek to chic in just one year. After buying a model at Sleeping Beauty Inc., your life will never be the same. But what will happen when the model Harrison buys isn't exactly what he bargained for?
Book Two: Sleeping Prince - Set in the deep future, Gage is a pilot transporting models for hire between the Jovian moons. Gage is a slave, having sold himself to Sleeping Beauty Inc. until he turns 30, but that might be a while as he spends 26 days out of 30 asleep on his ship. That is until one of the models he transports, Iona, has a contract for him. Looking at the contract, he can't believe his eyes. She can't really mean to buy him!
Book Three: Beauty of Ares - Tired of hiring temporary models? Why not try an arranged marriage through Sleeping Beauty Inc.'s Gold Edition catalog? Look no further than Lisbet. She's the daughter of an 'old money' diamond merchant. She'll dazzle your contact list with her wave of black hair and her violet eyes. She'll even travel to Mars, a place infamous for its cruelty toward purchased models. After her father sells her to Vantz Bloomburg, the head terratologist on Mars, she'll do anything.
Excerpt:
The first sign that things were not going well was when Lisbet’s mother asked her to go through her clothes to clear some space in her closet. Lisbet had not thought anything of it. Dutifully, she went through her dresses and made a pile of the ones that didn’t really fit her, were likely to malfunction, were less-than-ideal gifts, and weren’t that flattering to begin with. She thought there was something magical on the horizon, like a vacation or a project that would require her to get new clothes and that was the reason she needed more closet space.
No event came.
Instead, one of Lisbet’s friends was goofing off on the internet looking for vintage clothing and found all of Lisbet’s old clothing up for auction.
As her friend scrolled through the options, Lisbet noticed one of her dresses and said, “I used to have a dress exactly like that.”
Her friend scrolled to the next picture.
“Hey, I had one like that too,” she chortled.
On the third picture, Lisbet clued in that something was wrong and wisely stayed silent as her friend scrolled through pages of the clothes she’d given to her mother. Her friend didn’t say anything about it. It was one of the signs that her family’s money had dried up. Lisbet’s mother was trying to sell a five thousand dollar dress for forty thousand. The friend closed the auction window and when Lisbet left her house, she was never invited back.
People who didn’t have their own money were parasites.
It wasn’t personal.
Lisbet knew it wasn’t. She’d seen friends lose all their money before. She’d behaved exactly the same way. She couldn’t afford to give her poor friends the same lifestyle she enjoyed.
She held her head high and hoped that it was merely a phase.
It was merely a phase when her mother stopped asking if she could auction off her clothes and started taking them without her permission. It was merely a phase when all her jewelry went missing. Lisbet knew her mother had already auctioned off all her own pieces. It was merely a phase when Lisbet’s two younger sisters had their closets and jewelry boxes ransacked too.
But it was no longer a phase when Lisbet’s father had her meet with a coordinator from Sleeping Beauty Inc.
A million thoughts raced through Lisbet’s mind. Should she run away from home? She was twenty-six. It wasn’t running away from home when you were twenty-six. Besides, where could she go?
If Lisbet ran away, she couldn’t run away to her friends. They had all deserted her when they deciphered which way the wind was blowing.
Lovers? She’d had none. Her father had heavily discouraged her from having boyfriends, scolding her that the men she dated were not good enough for her. That meant that no man with a decent amount of money to his name had tried to date Lisbet. She had dumped all the poor choices according to her father’s instructions. People who didn’t have their own money were parasites.
She had a university degree in physics, but such a thing was only useful as a profession if accompanied by more schooling. As it was, she didn’t have enough education for any job she knew of. She blamed her father. It had been his idea for her to take a degree without an immediate practical application.
The tables had turned.
She was a parasite.
Lisbet scratched her nose and looked at the agreement the coordinator from Sleeping Beauty Inc. had brought with her. The coordinator was a woman in her late fifties named Quincy. In her prime, she would have been far prettier than Lisbet. If she was a coordinator, that probably meant that no one wanted to buy her anymore. However, Quincy was good at her job and fawned over Lisbet and her beauty to gain her favor as she looked over the contract.
It didn’t really work. Lisbet knew what she was and what she wasn’t. She also knew that the most remarkable thing about her was fake.
Lisbet had violet eyes. Not naturally, but she had needed eye surgery to correct her nearsightedness. The surgery would insert a contact lens under the membrane of her eye. It was an opportunity to choose a different eye color. Lisbet’s eyes had been hazel, a color so muddy that she had always wished to have blue eyes like her sisters. However, when given the choice, Lisbet chose violet and got a whole new look. It became her defining trait. Otherwise, her hair was black with a tangle of curls trailing down her back. Her skin was not creamy until after she did her makeup. Her figure was fine, but greatly improved by the right dress. She was a solid seven out of ten, which disappointed her because her sisters were like their mother and managed to score nines and tens depending on the occasion.
However, Quincy thought Lisbet had a lot to offer and praised her for her beauty and spoke repeatedly about how her degree in physics must mean that she was unusually bright.
The compliments were laid on so thick that Lisbet had to swallow her disbelief, or her vomit, more than once.
Lisbet looked down at the first contract she had been offered. It was a non-disclosure agreement.
She did a double take. If she wanted to have the meeting with the client coordinator she had to promise that their conversation would remain completely secret—whether she signed the final model agreement or not.
Sleeping Beauty Inc. was a company that traded in leasing human resources in temporary contracts. They advertised themselves as renting out personal assistants for full-life makeovers, meaning that models from Sleeping Beauty Inc. were not whores. They were stylists, housekeepers, artists, gardeners, personal assistants, and more. It was just that if a purchaser happened to want to go to bed with their model, everything was above board. There were better places to get cheap sex if that was all a purchaser wanted. A model from Sleeping Beauty Inc. was a classy, inventive person (usually a woman) who would work to improve her master’s life for as long as he owned her.
Lisbet didn’t know if people in her family’s previous wealth bracket hired models from Sleeping Beauty Inc. If they did, they didn’t tell. Her first thought was that it was not a respectable enough establishment for anyone to admit to it. If her father was trying to get a contract through them, things must be even more desperate than she thought.
Lisbet didn’t bother to glance at her father for his approval. The meeting had been his idea. She signed the non-disclosure agreement.
Then the truth came out.
“For the last sixty-three years, Sleeping Beauty Inc. has had a special division,” Quincy explained sweetly. “We call it the Gold Edition Models.”
She went on to explain that men from a higher tier of finances were sometimes ill-equipped to procure a wife. They were rich enough that they could marry anyone, but ‘anyone’ simply wouldn’t do. They needed a woman with a good reputation, who came from a good family, who could never embarrass them with a divorce, who would stand by them publicly, and bring a level of class to their lives that could not be had otherwise.
All of that made more sense to Lisbet than what the ads said.
“So, I wouldn’t be sold?” Lisbet asked, thinking that marriage was not a sale per se.
Lisbet’s father stayed quiet and let the coordinator answer. “Darling, you are very valuable. Priceless. In your case, your family would receive a fabulous sum of money for you, enough to save your father’s business. But I would be lying if I said you wouldn’t be sold. You would be the property and the wife of your owner.”
Those words rang in her head. You would be the property and the wife of your owner.
“That seems wrong,” Lisbet said, refusing to glance at her father.
“It wouldn’t be. Please remember that money has changed hands in arranged marriages for time out of mind. It was the common practice of royalty. You’re royalty, Lisbet. You’re priceless. Let’s see who wants to marry you.” The coordinator took an elaborate black and gold envelope from the contract package. She gave it to Lisbet with minor hesitation like she wanted to open it herself.
Lisbet opened the envelope. It was stiff in her hands, like the most expensive invitation she had ever touched.
The man was Vantz Bloomburg.
Lisbet covered her mouth.
